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Every day is Halloween for master movie designer
October 31, 1996
Web posted at: 11:00 p.m. EST
From Correspondent David George
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's Halloween -- a day for children to go door-to-door crying "trick or treat." And woe be unto any hard-hearted soul who denies them a treat. Because surely the trick's on him.
So, to ward off any evil spirits that might be lurking about, here's our Halloween "treat" for you, a visit to one of the world's foremost masters of disguise.
Designer John Dods' studio is filled with clawed fingers and twisted hands, gruesome goblins and ghastly ghouls. It looks like a Halloween house of horror, but this is how Dods' studio looks every day of the year.
Dods' credits include "Poltergeist III," "Aliens III," and "Ghostbusters II." He helped create body parts for Goldie Hawn in "Death Becomes Her," and he took on another queen of comedy, too -- making Whoopi Goldberg into a statue for "Naked in New York."
Dods works his magic in a studio in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Designers first draw a creature, then sculpt it in clay. Later they make a mold from the clay sculpture and fill the mold with foam rubber to form the final part.
Right now the workshop is busy turning out pieces for the Broadway musical "Beauty and the Beast." Dods is known for his prosthetic makeup -- custom-fit pieces sculpted on a plaster bust of an actor's face. They fit as precisely as a glove, and are flexible enough to provide a full range of expression.
But because they are so soft and flexible, the special prosthetics can only be used once.
Some of Dods' work is more durable. In contrast to the floppy, flexible foam rubber prosthetics, his tough metal armatures are like skeletons, hidden below rubber skin. They are figures for a stop-motion animated musical set in the Jurassic Age. which will be in theaters in about a year.
Dods explains how they work:
"Every stop-motion model has an armature like this one inside his skin," he says. "That let's me manipulate the model between frame exposures in little increments, so that when you look at the film what you see isn't me moving it, because when you shoot the frame I move away." (23 sec./1M QuickTime movie)
Dods says he could achieve the same effect with computer animation, but he likes the hands-on approach of using his model-making and sculptural skills.
But even master designer Dods concedes computers will play an increasingly important role as technology drives the film industry into the 21st century.
"The special effects you'll see in the future, will be 100 times more amazing than what you see now," he says. "Special effects men have always topped themselves -- delighted in topping themselves -- and been challenged by that."
Dods was more than willing to clown around for CNN's cameras wearing a favorite mask, but don't expect to see him in costume on Halloween.
"My life is Halloween," he says adding that on October 31 "I hide from my friends.
"I don't dress up, and I don't go out, because my life is Halloween. For John Dods, it seems, the tricks of the trade are treat enough.
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